


Battle Not With Monsters

by capitainpistol



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/M, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-05
Updated: 2015-12-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 02:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5357621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/capitainpistol/pseuds/capitainpistol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John and Root get a room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Not With Monsters

The blood seeps into his crisp white shirt. Root catches John wince as he positions himself to look out the window of the single window in their motel room. He bites down and pushes the pain to the back of his mind. She’s seen him take hits before and knows he can last a good while before he passed out, but she pulls him away to take care of it.

“Something wrong?” John asks immediately, genuinely worried for her safety though he was the one shot.

“Yes, John. You.” 

Root barely has to tug. John comes easily to sit in front of her. Six foot three, two hundred pounds of pure Boy Scout falls onto the bed, the barest hint of exhaustion curving his spine. 

John lands in a half turn towards the front door. The military instinct to always see the exit makes his wound bleed more profusely. Plans A through D run through his pretty salt and pepper head. None of those plans involve saving his life.

She turns his head back to look up at her, fingers gentle on his chin but the pull firm. John acquiesces to her unspoken demand not to turn again with a smile, but it is strained. He’s trying to be cool and ride out the shot, but sweat gleams off his forehead. She wipes it off with her sleeve.

“There’s no need,” he says when she begins to prod. “Bullet just grazed me.” 

Once upon a time a sad little smile like John’s would have made Root laugh with pity. Now she cares. Now she’s interested. Root removes his jacket and he endures the pain without complaint. Next came his shirt.

Root stares at his torso, mouth open and brain reeling, heart in her throat. “Good thing you’re not made out of sand, John.” 

He has scars everywhere. Long ones, new ones, fading ones, endless leather circles where bullets pierced, skin patches hardened to a different colors, burn marks, stab wounds, teeth imprints where he’d been bitten. You name it. He had it. The latest addition to the Pollack that was John’s upper body barely registers, but for its bright redness. In fact, it’s a graze where other bullets have grazed. 

“Root.”

Root is transfixed. She wants to know where each scar came from. Details. Names if he had them. Root wanted to find them and hurt them. She already knew how to do it, too. Quickly. John didn’t like it when people suffered. A thousand more questions spring to her mind. The decent ones that would bond them are not the ones she truly wants to ask.

John recognizes the look in Root’s eyes. Few people let themselves indulge in that kind of… interest.

Root licked her lips and bit down on the bottom one, eyes darting up and down John’s naked torso. “May I?” She asks, humility, desire and excitement all meshed together in her voice.

Her steady hands came to his arms slowly, carefully. She squeezed his biceps like he really was made of sand. Shaw flashes in his mind’s eye, and then Harold, but whatever adverse effect he expected doesn’t come. Conjuring their images makes John relax.

Root’s fingernails rake down his arms, the only part of him that is smooth. “Just like hers,” she says.

John stands up when she does. Her hands move from his arms to his stomach, touching the fading scars on the left and smudging the blood that came off the graze on his right. 

“Sure you want to do this, Root? I didn’t think you liked men.”

“Are you sure you’re a man, John? More like Frankenstein’s monster to me.”

Without missing a beat, John asks, “That turn you on?”

Root grins. John has already said yes, and it fills her with relief. How would she have even asked? We should fuck, but lets stay friends? That was an awkward moment waiting to happen.

“A little.” She drew her hands to his back. His ass was firm, his cock hard against her hips. She could do whatever she wanted, and he’d let her. They breathed long, taking their time as they closed the space between them. Her nose crunched up as it brushed against his. Root pulled him in for a kiss. “Ok,” she says when they come apart. “A lot.”


End file.
